Real Software Forums

way off topic I know..
I have searched the net... spend 2 days trying dozens of options and nothing comes close to working

1) I have a ISO for Win7 Premium (32bit)
2) I have a legal and legit Win7 Key
3) I have an older MacPro (1,1) running Snowleopard that I want to use as a Win7 Test Bed

The problem is the DVD (superdrive) doesn't work... and I don't want to spend any more money just to get Win7 installed.
I have tried all the tricks to make a bootable USB flashdrive .... but it won't boot. I have made a DVD (which seems to work on my other macs, but sice the SuperDrive is broke that doesn't help me)... Win7 doesn't seem to be able to be booted from an external drive (except if the computer does not have one (ie. new iMacs and MBA))

If anyone has done this, can they post step-by-step instructions on what they did? (I even tried reFit to boot the USB... so I think maybe I did something wrong there). Most of the sites on the web are not too specific.... too much guessing involved.

Sorry I don't have any steps, but can you boot from a network volume somehow? Netboot?

Dave I'll check with my engineering team to see if they ran into this as they are running 10.8.2/10.8.3 with Win7 using Bootcamp.

If you have another Windows box, you will need to set the external drive to be "active" and then copy the contents of the ISO to the drive.. In Snow Leopard set the boot disk to the external drive (i think it can be set for a Windows drive, but never infected my Macs with Windows)..

I realize you're trying to use Boot Camp, but...

You could easily create a Parallels or Fusion VM on a Mac with a good drive, and copy that to your Mac with the broken drive.

I used to use Fusion, but ended up switching to Parallels over a couple features, and I can't recommend it enough. I keep multiple VMs not just for testing purposes, but for actual Windows .NET development.

I believe the Mac Pro (1,1) will only boot off of a usb flash drive if it is GUID partitioned. It won't boot off of MBR partitioned usb flash drives, though reFit should booted it I think.

Here's a link (tech-recipes.com) to instructions that someone made for a Macbook Air. I don't know if it will work with the Mac Pro (1,1).

Of course, if you could get your hands on an external usb DVD drive that would be easier.

Good Luck.

I don't have specific advice about your Boot Camp problem. However, I also instead recommend that you use a VM rather than Boot Camp. A VM will certainly be slower than Boot Camp, but not that much slower if you are using it for development. Plus, a VM works great with the Remote Debugger, allow you to develop on OS X and easily test on Windows.

Personally, I use VMware Fusion which is only like $50 or so. But VirtualBox is free and also works perfectly fine.

This did work for me a couple of years back. Took a while

http://huguesval.com/blog/2012/02/installing-windows-7-on-a-mac-without-superdrive-with-virtualbox/

Sorry I didn't respond sooner... I was on vacation for the past few days.

A VM is not an option.... Parallels totally corrupted my system a few years back.... and as a result they will never get another cent from me.... basically due to how "helpful" (not) their support staff was... (Oh well to bad, so sad, reformat and reinstall)... [gee thanks]

My biggest issue, is even thought the SuperDrive won't read or write, the computer still knows that it is there, and "thinks" it works.

I will read over some of the other suggestions above and let you all know what happens


Thanks

Open the computer and unhook the SuperDrive and put in a different one..

Having been down the bootcamp route a couple times, VMWare is by far the most convenient, most flexible and most straightforward way to run Windows on a Mac, IMVHO. I definitely recommend it for cross compiling Real Studio apps, because Real Studio is 'so' unstable on Windows, in my experience. I have a native Win7 x64 platform but have given up trying to run the IDE on it.

I have been using VMWare Fusion since it came out without any real issues. I tried Parallels once. It was OK but it was trying to be too clever. The main thing with both products is to disable all the OSX/Windows integration features before you start your guest OS.

I also have a Mac Pro (2008) running VMWare ESX 5.1 Server (which is free), hosting half a dozen or so Windows and Linux installations. It was simple to install and works well enough, as long as you can get by working headless - SSH / X / VNC for Linux and RDP for Windows.

I have managed to get Windows 7 installed onto a Mac using a USB Flash stick (with Superdrive connected). It was a while ago but I seem to recall having to use a tool called rEFIt to overcome the Mac's EFI challenges. http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Sourcing and extracting the right Apple hardware (Windows) driver package was a bit of a pain too, from what I remember.

Good advice. You have to step through and set the many integration options on either, and Parallels does indeed try to be too clever with everything on.

For the record, I like VMWare Fusion as well and used it for years. It's only recently that Parallels got a couple features / UI changes that I prefer over Fusion, so I switched. But Fusion is an excellent product in its own right.